C.J. Leede > Quotes

“Men have always been permitted in fiction and in life to simply be what they are, no matter how dark or terrifying that might be. But with a woman, we expect an answer, a reason.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“I have never understood, and still do not understand the notion that a woman must first endure a victimhood of some sort—abandonment, abuse, oppression of the patriarchy—to be monstrous. Men have always been permitted in fiction and in life to simply be what they are, no matter how dark or terrifying that might be. But with a woman, we expect an answer, a reason. But why would she do it? Why, why, why?”
― CJ Leede, Maeve Fly

“He howls questions to me: Who are you? Why are you doing this? I didn’t do anything to anyone. I don’t deserve this. Why me? This is a failing of men. This same violence, applied to a woman, she does not ask why it is being inflicted upon her, she only struggles unsuccessfully to free herself and grieves the fact she has grieved her entire life, one that she understands fundamentally and innately. That violence simply occurs.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“I have tried the way of the misanthrope, the way of the deviant, the philosopher, the observer, the pretender. But there is one road I have not seriously considered walking down, have not permitted myself to. Perhaps it is time.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“Here is the truth, the one that so few of us know:
You do not need a moral and noble story to do what you want.
You do not first need to be a victim to become a monster.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“I love Halloween because all the time, everyone wears masks. But one night a year, they do it openly. The dark and forbidden things they wish to be but deny themselves, on Halloween they don’t. On Halloween, they embrace it, all of it. The hidden parts of the world are exposed, if only for one night. And those things that are truly dark are a little less alone.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“A lifetime thus far of being alone. Of knowing I would be alone, forever. To stand in a full room and know oneself to be apart, that invisible barrier between you and them to be in every way uncrossable. To find the will to exist in a world so wholly unsuited for you.”
― CJ Leede, Maeve Fly

“There are no spoilers in life. If you are observant and pragmatic, the endings of all things are easily predictable. In the most basic terms, human life is always punctuated with death. It does not cheapen the buildup to know it. There are many winding paths to an inevitable end, and there is so much beauty and pain in the watching.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“Inside my room, I turn on Billy Holiday. There are only two kinds of music in my world. Billy Holiday and Halloween songs.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“I signed the form as if my whole life hadn't been an unwritten contract ensuring my abstinence anyway. As if my whole value as a person, a future wife, a mortal girl and woman who hopes not to burn in eternal hellfire doesn't lie largely in my intact virginity.”
― C.J. Leede, American Rapture

“There are many definitions of insanity in this world. One could argue that spooning a man’s eyeball out of the socket and performing carnal acts of religious desecration with it is insanity - we will revisit that later- perhaps you’d be right, but I argue that true insanity is driving in Los Angeles.”
― CJ Leede, Maeve

“I have never understood, and still do not understand the notion that a woman must first endure a victimhood of some sort—abandonment, abuse, oppression of the patriarchy—to be monstrous.”
― CJ Leede, Maeve Fly

“The wolf is strong. But there is one who is stronger. You will have to feed it, every day, forever. You will have to nurture it, Maeve, for the wolf can never be seen again. Not by me, and not by anyone. You cannot be what you are and survive.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“The core of the story was there. People so often get hung up on the facts, on plausibility or details. But every day in this life, we’re all only telling each other, and ourselves, stories. We may as well make them good.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“A Letter to the Reader

I thought my dog dying was going to kill me.

If I’m being honest, I still think it, some days. Most days. If I’m being honest, I still think it every day.

Soul-mutt. Best friend. Not everyone understands, or will. That’s fine. I’ve never been one to want to share in grief, never been one to share much of anything. Only child, writer. A dog removes itself from the pack to lick wounds clean. A dog goes off, alone, to die. But we all know it—a family member, a friend, the sudden glazing of the eyes, the feel of a heart stopping beneath our hand. Our souls and selves dropping pieces each time someone exits this earth. Our identities, foundations shaken. Even sometimes bulldozed to nothing.

This one brought me to my knees. At the time of writing this note, I can honestly say, I have never felt anything like this. I am truly surprised it hasn’t killed me.

I always knew Barghest was going to die.

Barghest’s death was (with the deaths of the others) the worst thing I could think of, and my job as I see it is to explore all the worsts. And all the bests, too. This book, or more accurately, an early, now unrecognizable version of it, was the first thing I ever seriously wrote. It was also what got me started on this path of Writer. Someone read this early snippet and believed in it, in me. This was a story that I wanted to tell from day one, ideas that hounded me then and have for all the years since.

It’s taken ten years, an education, all the events of a decade of life, and more drafts than I’d like to count for me to tell this story in a way that felt right. In a way that is (I hope) befitting of you, most precious reader. And these dogged questions of guilt, shame, faith have nipped at my heels through everything.

Funny, how they always draw just enough blood to keep us from running full tilt.

But now. In the wake of a loss that has shaken me more than any I’ve lived through before, in a moment in which I find myself, like Sophie, questioning everything, questioning what the point of being here is at all, I have to say,

It all feels very human and very small to confine and bind ourselves to anything that seeks to diminish us. This world and universe and existence is so expansive and evolving, and we choose to let ourselves be crippled by someone else’s ideas.

We share life with mortality. We will die. Everyone we love will die. We will all face the dark. Together, or separate. We just don’t know. There is no self-help book, no textbook, no how-to that can tell us, definitively, what comes after. By the time any of us has the answers, we won’t be here to write them. None of us knows, even if we think we do.

But here is what I do know: We live with death. And horror chooses not to turn away from it.

Horror looks the darkness in the eyes. Horror dances with the absence, the loss. Explores ways for us—you, the reader, and me—to take it in our arms and spin around together. Ways to embrace the centrifugal force that is human striving, human searching. Mortal life.

Dogs die. Humans die. We live with it, whether we want to or not.

But from choosing to look, choosing not to turn away, from our embrace in the darkness, I hope that guilt and shame and any idea invented to hold you down in this glorious, nearly blinding existence, will seem, at the end of it all, very, very small.

You, and me, spinning too fast for them to catch us.

Thank you for continuing on this journey with me. With my characters, who are of course, now yours. These questions and worlds that I humbly share with you. That now belong to you.

And while we keep hurtling through the unknown, as we spin round and round, I want to say,

Here’s to dancing, book by book, question by question, through this vast, shining existence.

Together.”
― C.J. Leede, American Rapture

“It’s only the kind of fucked-up girls who like my princess, the sister with the destructive powers, the one without a husband. The one who occupies the space of both princess and villainess.”
― CJ Leede, Maeve Fly

“Free to live whatever life he wants. There are dangers. There is infection, there is violence, there is weather and the problem of currency and a million forces that could work against them. But maybe none of that matters because he chose it.”
― C.J. Leede, American Rapture

“It was the grime and the shine together.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“Tasks can carry you through many hours of a life otherwise too empty to contemplate. And books, the right ones, can nearly make you forget what it is you’re trying to forget in the first place.”
― C.J. Leede, American Rapture

“You wanna know why I think possession scares you?" Cleo says, elbows resting on her knees, looking at me intently. "It's the same reason they want it to. Because on some level you feel that you've already given up your free will. God and Jesus and the Devil and angels and demons have already infiltrated your thoughts, your whole being. The church has. They make us so afraid of possession, of doing wrong and being wrong, because they don't want us to see they've done it to us already. That fear, guilt, and shame, that has possessed you your entire life. And they put it there. Now tell me who's the one who deserves to go to hell.”
― C.J. Leede, American Rapture

“Being your age, it’s the best and the worst. You know what I mean? Like, everything is so intense. So extreme, and it all feels life or death, even when it’s not. Everything does. Exams, friendships, first love. But that’s what’s so great about it. You just feel so alive all the time. You just feel.”
― C.J. Leede, American Rapture

“What does it feel like?" My words a whisper.
She smiles at me, and I know I'll remember it for the rest of my life.
"Like wings on the wind, baby.”
― C.J. Leede, American Rapture

“You do not need a moral and noble story to do what you want. You do not first need to be a victim to become a monster. Your loved ones need not be taken from you so that you might drink and brutalize and chase the sublime. Life is fleeting and meaningless and crying to be seized from behind and fucked into obscurity.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“Men," Maeve muses, "have always been permitted in fiction and in life to simply be what they are, no matter how dark or terrifying that might be. But with a woman, we expect an answer, a reason.”
― CJ Leede

“Every square inch of the wood-paneled walls is covered with photographs of cops, some black-and-white, some in color. Red-and-white Ws and America's Dairyland, old flaking signs for Lake Monona, Lake Mendota, and the U.P. Posters, with all kinds of beer, half-nude women holding giant mugs of it. All the color, words, images, the vibrant clutter of them, such a stark contrast to the spare tans, beiges, and wood of our home, our church, the school. My life.”
― C.J. Leede, American Rapture

“And … I don’t get it. I mean they all say it’s unnatural, but … what’s so unnatural about dressing up in costumes and putting on a show? Don’t we do that in pageants for the holidays? And a lot of what I’m finding is them just reading books to kids. How can that be so bad? It looks actually … kind of fun.”
― C.J. Leede, American Rapture

“Noah's voice, the wind beating against the window. Birds are always chirping after a storm, telling the world they've made it through. Finding each other. "I'd want to be a bird," I say.”
― C.J. Leede, American Rapture

“There are no spoilers in life. There is only just the one ending.”
― CJ Leede, Maeve Fly

“But if there’s no tomorrow for you, there’s still a tomorrow for all the people who care about you.”
― C.J. Leede, American Rapture

“You don't carry a precious thing to give away only once, and you do not lose value as a human or a woman once you give it. You are a precious thing, you.”
― C.J. Leede, American Rapture